Foreign Aid Underwrites Another Chapter in Cambodia's Bloody History

Recently, I watched Florida's Senator Marco Rubio -- who is allegedly short-listed as a vice-presidential candidate -- on TV, dancing around to avoid answering whether he supports Mitt Romney's position of cutting foreign aid to reduce the budget deficit. While totally ending foreign aid is unnecessary, countries with repressive and corrupt regimes are prime candidates for such a move. First, a diplomatic démarche should be issued with a concrete timetable for ending human rights abuses and theft of aid.
Cambodia is high on the list of problem nations in this regard. Free and fair elections were held for the first and last time in 1993, when the Royalist FUNCINPEC Party (the United Front for an Independent, Neutral, Peaceful, and Cooperative Cambodia) won. However, in 1997, Hun Sen, the number-two official in the communist Cambodian People's Party (CPP), backed by 300 Pol Pot Khmer Rouge (KR) fighters commanded by the notorious butcher Keo Pong, led a coup...(Read Full Article)